


Baby Steps

by gwinne



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-23
Updated: 2018-06-23
Packaged: 2019-05-27 09:49:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15022004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gwinne/pseuds/gwinne
Summary: post-ep for Requiem (written with no knowledge of anything that occurred afterward)





	Baby Steps

**Author's Note:**

> This is part of what I once imagined to be a series of vignettes devoted to Scully's pregnancy and her thoughts on  
> Mulder's disappearance. Written July 2000 and first archived at Gossamer.

Scully was standing in line at the grocery store when it hit her, a familiar wave of nausea and melancholy. She exhaled slowly. In the cart in front of her, a baby kicked its heels together and smiled. She had to remind herself not to feel envious of the young mother, spreading jars of Gerbers and boxes of Pampers on the conveyer belt. It was the feet that got to her every time-- the sturdy white baby shoes with their ugly soles, or the pink booties, or, god, the bare feet, with the thick ankles and chubby little toes. Soon, she reminded herself, soon. And for a brief moment, she pictured Mulder tickling the bottom of their baby's feet as she lay face up on their bed.

Mulder. Deep breath, she told herself, exhale. It had been two months, two months of dizzy spells and vomiting and crying and an incessant need to pee. And fear: that she'd never see Mulder again, that she'd lose the only piece of him she had left, this child blooming like a fiddlehead inside the once-barren field of her womb. The morning several weeks ago when she woke with the worst cramps of her life and a streak of bright red on her underwear, Dana sat half-dressed on the bathroom floor and sobbed, crying for him, crying for her, crying for them. But then Dr. Scully became rational and Agent Scully gained control; she pulled herself up from the floor, called her OB, put on a suit, and went to work. Case closed.

In front of her, the baby started to cry, and when the mother turned around, Scully smiled wistfully. Soon. She was in the sixteenth week now, just starting to show, and for the first time, starting to believe. Baby steps.

* * *

Scully had barely set the groceries on the countertop when she started pulling of her clothes. Everything was so confining these days; all the suits she liked (that Mulder liked) cinched at the waist, and she couldn't stand to wear what she thought of as her fat clothes, the ivory and black pantsuits she kept at the back of her closet as a reminder of her post-abduction days when her body had become unrecognizable, her appetite out of control. Her mother had been bugging her to go shopping for maternity clothes, but, with the threat of miscarriage so tangible, she just couldn't bring herself to go. The time for that was now, with the visual reassurance of the latest ultrasound tucked in her briefcase; she'd add it to the scrapbook later, a collection of moments she desperately hoped Mulder could see.

Still stripping, she walked into her bedroom and pulled on a gray t-shirt of Mulder's. It smelled like her now, not him, but she'd put it on the last time they'd made love, the night before he left for Oregon with Skinner. Even retrospectively, she was glad she hadn't known it might be their last night together. Their passion was genuine, not the frantic lovemaking of two people convinced they would never see each other again. It was the same slow burn that brought them together the night he'd returned from England and she told him about Daniel. She felt a quick throb between her legs, remembering how tender Mulder had been that night. She missed him desperately and, chuckling softly to herself, imagined the conversation they might have if he were here.

"I have a theory," he'd say, running his hand up her bare thigh. "Well, it's not really my theory, a widely held theory in the medical profession, and I was wondering if I could get your opinion."

"Yeah. Sure. OK."

"Is it true that women have an increased sexual appetite in the second trimester?"

"I don't know Mulder. That theory of yours might require some hard evidence. We'll just have to investigate."

She found herself doing that often: carrying on imaginary conversations out of the sheer need for him to be there during this pregnancy, to experience it with her. He'll come back, she thought, he always comes back, thinking of how he somehow, God knows how, he managed to escape from that boxcar in New Mexico; how she and the guys literally fished him out from the sea in Bermuda; how she'd gotten him back from the DOD lab and patched him back together with bandages and nights of cheap Chinese. At the moment she least expected it, he would walk into their basement office, kiss her and make some snide remark. "Scully, you should have told me you really were having David Crosby's baby..."

* * *

After work she went to Mulder's place, like she did every night. Someone had to feed the orphaned fish, and somehow she'd managed to convince herself that if she went there and straightened up, kept orange juice and iced tea in the refrigerator, watched a little bit of TV, that he wasn't missing, not really, just gone on one of his many "side projects" without her. She pulled out the photo album he kept in the bottom desk drawer, the one with the few family pictures, some mysterious man like Kurzweil or the recently named CGB Spender lurking in the background. Today she noticed one she'd never seen before and wondered if he'd taken it from his mother's after the funeral. It was black and white; a young woman sat on the floor, and in the V of her open legs, a chubby-legged baby struggled to keep himself upright. One foot was slightly in front of the other, both arms stretched toward the sky, and the grin was unmistakable. Scully pulled the photo out from the protective casing and looked at the back. "July 1962--baby steps--Fox." She imagined Bill Mulder on the other side of the camera, and she hoped he looked lovingly at Teena, at their tiny son. She hoped Mulder would be back in time to take a picture of her like that, half-crying, half-smiling at their baby's feet. She clutched the photograph to her chest, pulled his Navajo blanket up to her chin, and dreamed.


End file.
